My tank is an in-wall tank in my basement and with the cold streak this week, today is the first time my twin 200-W heaters are unable to keep up with heating my tank. It's running 2 degrees below where it should be running and I keep getting alerts from my Apex today. Looks like it's time to add a third heater to my system for really cold days! Anyone else having any similar issues?

I would love to be able to use a larger heater, but I had found that many of them were too long to fit where I'd like them to be in my sump. I found that the Eheim Jager 200W heaters I have work well and were the right size - but apparently with this frigid weather they have a hard time keeping up when the lights aren't on. I'll start to look at options and see what I can come up with.

I use 3x 300 watt Fluval heaters in the winter and 2 in the summer. 1 heater in the sump , 1 in the refugium , and 1 in the frag tank. My display doesn't need one since the canopy insulates it pretty good.

BraenDead wrote:I would love to be able to use a larger heater, but I had found that many of them were too long to fit where I'd like them to be in my sump. I found that the Eheim Jager 200W heaters I have work well and were the right size - but apparently with this frigid weather they have a hard time keeping up when the lights aren't on. I'll start to look at options and see what I can come up with.

I was looking at those - my one concern would be that if the controller flakes out, it doesn't have a secondary heat controller or thermostat (such as a built in thermostat). Granted, I don't want to rely on a built-in thermostat to maintain the temperature of the system, but I also prefer to know that it is there as a fail-safe should my controller have issues.

I was looking at those - my one concern would be that if the controller flakes out, it doesn't have a secondary heat controller or thermostat (such as a built in thermostat). Granted, I don't want to rely on a built-in thermostat to maintain the temperature of the system, but I also prefer to know that it is there as a fail-safe should my controller have issues.

Hey Bob, I had similar issues in the past and found an easy solution online. One thing to keep in mind, is that depending on your entire systems water volume, is that having two heaters next to each other is actually counter productive. I don't know what your setup is like, but if you can keep them as far away from each other as possible, you might find that it could help alleviate the problem as they are trying to combat and/or compete against one another if they are too close. The biggest problem with having heaters right next to each other is that if one of them is on heating the water, the others internal thermostat is going to register that as the water being the desired temperature because it's just mechanical. It's not going off of what the entire water volume is at. Placing them away from eachother gives both heaters internal chips to be able to register the entire water column as a whole, instead of trying to read the water temperature around each others surface area. There are a lot of controllers out there for added piece of mind as Cliff mentioned. And if you are worried about one going haywire you can always double them up. Meaning to buy two controlors, sync them to your desired temp, and use a splitter to be able to put both heaters on both controlors. Also, depending on the size of your tank. You could always set up a regular heating unit like the ones used to heat rooms, and put it on a timer and aim it in the direction of the tank. Just some food for thought.

If you can't seperate them, try aiming a powerhead in their direction to get some water agitation going and hopefully the heat will disperse evenly, as heat naturally rises to the top whether it's on land or in water.

I'm not dealing with an issue of them competing or fighting with each other. They are fairly close, but there is a lot of flow in a small area and they are not heating each other up (verified by monitoring amp usage of the outlets - there's no fluctuation of either heater's amperage when they are on).

I ordered one of the Finnex Titanium heaters that comes with it's own controller, so that I'll still have redundancy. I'm especially sensitive to this, having gone through a tank crash related to heating issues.

I swapped out one of the 200W Eheim Jager heaters for a 300W Finnex Titanium Digital Controller heaters, and the extra 100W of heating is keeping the temperature stable. However, I was pretty disappointed in the cable lengths on the heater. From the control unit to the heater is about 3 feet, and from the control unit to the temperature probe is less than that (2.5ft or so). The power cord from the outlet to the control unit is about 3 ft as well. Anyways, adding a few extra feet would make it much easier to properly route cables and keep water-sensitive things (like the control unit) located away from water. As it is currently, once it warms up I'm going to go back to using the Eheim Jager heater instead.

Hey Bob, I don't mean to be that guy but I had a serious issue with that Finnex titanium brand before. Had two control thingys on the cord crap out within a couple months a while back. I finally ended up with a Blueline with a 1000w element and have never been more happy with a heater. They aren't cheap though. I do keep two 200w eheim jagers as my ace in the hole though just in case. See you at the frag swap

Jake, I'm not too surprised. I considered sending it back but figured it would do as a spare heater and for cold winters. It's controlled by my apex so as long as it doesn't leak electricity in the tank, I'll be happy.

I had the same issues this year. I don't think it was due to the cold. I had the tanks set at 76 and the house at 69. The heaters suddenly were not keeping up and the tanks were as low 70 to 72. My clowns quit spawning. Everything else seemed fine. I turned the house up to 73 and the tanks went back to 76. I liked the house better cooler and it was cheaper but like air in the summer you just have to do it with tanks. Trust me, heating your house is cheaper than adding more heaters to your tanks.